


To Chase A Patch Of Sunlight

by Patchouli (lifelesslyndsey)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Halloween, How They Met, Parenthood, Pumpkins, how Stiles Came To Be, let's get it on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 11:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4958221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifelesslyndsey/pseuds/Patchouli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was.... there was a baby in his pumpkin. There was a baby in the passenger seat of his patrol car.</p><p> </p><p>Holy fucking shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Chase A Patch Of Sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> just a little thing I wrote for Halloween. 
> 
> it was originally part of another fic, but I liked it as stand-alone better.

It’s a very, very well known fact that Stiles was the product of a bewildering affair between the respectable Deputy of Beacon Hills and the crazy lady that lived in the cottage down on Gardenia Drive, who grew amazing heirloom tomatoes but never shaved her legs. Their love story is the kind of shit people write epics about - they’re a goddamn Shakespearian ode. But there’s more to it; Siles has heard the real stories. His dad - then Deputy Stilinski - had been dispatched to Gardenia to convince the crazy lady -now known as Mom- to put her clothes back on, or risk arrest.

 

It wasn’t the first time.  Deputy Stilinski spent a lot of time chasing after Claudia, while she laughed and dodged him. Later, they shared cups of sweet flowery tea in her cottage, and smiles over tables, and across streets.

 

They were smitten.

 

Needless to say, she did not get arrested, and several months later Stiles was born in the front seat of the patrol car from a big round pumpkin -

 

Yeah.

 

Stiles was born from a pumpkin. It’s....it’s a thing that happened.

 

See. His parents...did their thing...in his mother's pumpkin patch. In his mother's magical fucking pumpkin patch.  And when the little shoot first broke the soil weeks later - to early for pumpkins- his mom had taken one look at it and frowned before gathering her prettiest terra cotta pot, and planting him safely in her very best grave-dirt (that shit was rich in magic, soaked in years and years of life). He wasn’t a particularly healthy shoot -his leaves were tiny, and his vines curled wonky and wrong. She did her best - she watered him and sang to him and chased patches of sun with his pot tucked in the bend of her arm but ---he didn’t grow like he should.

 

“Don’t be sad, baby,” she’d cooed, rubbing his tiny, wilting flowers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. He’ll make it better. I know he will.”

 

Stiles mom....Stiles mom was a bad mutt-mix of magic.  They don’t happen often - it’s simple genetics. As witches went, she was half Hedgie and half Mage. Her magic worked against her. She loved the earth, fostered it, grew it, worshipped it - and then devoured it to ash and ruin. That’s why Stiles was sick. Her magic wanted him too.

 

“Gresskar,” Claudia murmured, hugging the little pot. “You’ll be okay. You’ll be fine. John will---” She watched as her tears fell upon the wilted petals, browning them instantly. “He’ll be better for you.”

 

She didn’t mean too.

 

So she gathered up his pot, and walked to town holding it against her chest. She’d found the deputy without even looking.  He lived in a little condo overlooking the preserve, with a tiny patch of a yard, weedless and brilliantly green - well kept, she thought - and that was important.  They had plans to meet for lunch - she was early, but that didn’t matter.

 

He grinned when he found her at his door. He always smiled for her, always seemed so impossibly thrilled to see her. It made this that much harder. “Did I get the time wrong?”

 

“I need you to take this.” She thrust the pot into the his hands, and smiled when he grabbed onto it, on instinct. “I have to go away. It’s....it’s important. That you take care of him.”

 

“Oh----kay?” His voice turned up into a question, but he hugged the little pot regardless.  The tiny tendrils unfurled against the soil, and Claudia smiled. “Uh... When will you be back? We’ll rain check for lunch-- do you have to go right now?”

 

She didn’t want too but.... “Yes. It’s....I would stay if I could, but I can’t. You’ll....You’ll take care of him?”

 

“I don’t mind watering your plants,” he told her, sounding or all the world bewildered and confused. “I could have just come to your place though. How long will you be gone?”  

 

“Don’t forget to water him,” She said seriously, pushing the bulk of her wind-swept auburn curls from her face. She wanted to touch them both- run her hands over the Deputies scruff, curl the vines of the little pumpkin around her fingers. But she didn’t. “And make sure he gets a lot of sun. And....and talk to him. He likes that. You don’t have to sing but....just talk to him.”

 

“Him?”

 

She moved down the steps of his little porch, skirts swishing in the gentle breeze. “....and find me when he’s grown?” She added, sounding not so sure. “If...if you want to. I have to go for now...I can’t----” She shook her head, losing words to the wind, and tears stained her cheeks.  “I’ll be back, I promise, just----”

 

“But when? Claudia, wait!” He’d chased after her, the pot clutched with both arms, but Claudia was spritely, and disappeared with ease between the trees behind his house. The Deputy strapped the pot into the front seat of his car, and drive to her cottage but it was empty of everything, including her.

 

She was gone.  Just like that, she as gone. John stood on the cobbled path of her walk, held the little terra cotta pot in the bend of his elbow and wondered what the hell just happened.

 

He took the plant home.  She hadn’t said what it was, and he couldn’t guess from the skinny, looping vine. But still, he watered it regularly, and moved it from window to window as the shafts of light shifted with the setting sun. He set it on the porch sometimes, when he came home from work. It was greener now, than when Claudia left.  In the mornings, he awkwardly read it the newspaper. It felt silly but...it seemed so important to her.  

 

One morning, he woke to find a tiny yellow flower had blossomed overnight. He touched the prickly petals and realized with a grin that the plant was a pumpkin.

 

A potted pumpkin.

 

It was just the sort of strange thing Claudia would keep.

 

It grew, a tiny button of a pumpkin that started out lime green, and darkened with stripes before fading to a familiar orange. When it was as big as the Deputies fist, he started taking it to work with him.  It seemed...wrong, to leave it at home. The other officers gave him shit, but the little pot sat on the corner of his desk, and the little pumpkin grew slowly but surely, too big to sit in it. So john took to carrying them both, the pot in one hand, and the pumpkin in another, with nothing but a healthy, curling vine to join them.

 

Claudia had been gone for months and--- well. John missed her. He told the pumpkin about her sometimes, over take out, in front of the couch. The pumpkin sat beside him, the pot tucked safely in between the cushion so the soil wouldn’t spill.

 

One morning, as the Sheriff was struggling to gather both the large pumpkin and the tiny pot into his arms to take to work - the vine broke.

 

It was like the world came screeching to a halt. The Deputy stared at it in horror, the severed stretch of green. The pot tipped and, spilled and the pumpkin sat still on the table, and John felt sick at the sight of it.

 

Pumpkins didn’t live very long, off the vine.

 

He took a sick day and thought about Claudia, and wondered if maybe he was going crazy because it was just a pumpkin. It was just a fucking pumpkin, so he put it on the porch - because, because it was October, and that’s where pumpkins should be, and it was just a pumpkin but---

 

He brought it back inside, and read it the newspaper, and tried to squash the frantic worry in his chest - did he...did he kill it? It was going to die, and Claudia was never going to come back and---

 

The pumpkin shook. Rocked back and forth on the table.  John shot back in his kitchen chair, wide-eyed and frantic. A foot burst from the side, tiny and pink and covered in pumpkin guts. A...a baby foot.

 

Horrified, stunned-- a lot of other adjectives - John gathered the pumpkin into his arms and raced to the car. Pumpkin goo spilled from the hole as the foot was followed with a leg, a leg that kicked madly, wriggled and wiggled even as John buckled the pumpkin into the front seat.

 

There was.... there was a baby in his pumpkin. There was a baby in the passenger seat of his patrol car.

 

Holy fucking shit.

 

Holding the wriggling pumpkin in his arms, he pounded on Claudia’s door, hopelessly, fruitlessly - she was gone, gone for months - but then a light flickered on and there she was, wide eyed and beautiful and he missed her, and the pumpkin - he--- it---

 

“Oh!” She blinked at him, at the pumpkin, at the leg, and pulled them both inside. “I--- I didn’t think--- Bring him in, bring him in---”

 

Stiles was born from a pumpkin, in a spill of seeds and pumpkin guts while his parents held hands and kissed and did other gross stuff.

 

So yeah. That was a thing that happened.

  
  
  



End file.
